Surfactant-assisted shape separation from silver nanoparticles prepared by a seed-mediated method

So far from the suggestion of a seed-mediated method, there has been considerable development in the controllable synthesis of anisotropic nanoparticles. However, the formed nanoparticles often exhibit considerable polydispersity in their size or shape. In this work, we improved the surfactant-assisted shape separation method that were different from gold nanorods reported previously to purify silver nanotriangles and investigated the important parameters systematically. The results showed that relative amount of CTAB to AgNPs (which was determined by the concentration and volume of CTAB) and the temperature of CTAB were the critical roles in the separation of silver nanotriangles. Silver nanospheres, small nanotriangles and big nanotriangles were separated successfully from their associated nanoparticles by the surfactant-assisted shape separation in twice. The separated nanoparticles have higher regularity and more uniform size, which is important to enlarge the application scope of silver nanomaterials. This improved method allows us to purify silver or other metal nanoparticles prepared by a facile seed-mediated method in high efficiency and yield.